Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $572 million for its role in Oklahoma’s opioid crisis.
Cleveland County Judge Thad Balkman made his judgment in the lawsuit brought by the Oklahoma AG against the company for what the state alleges it did to fuel the U.S. opioid crisis.
A judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million for its role in the opioid crisis in Oklahoma.
More than 6,000 Oklahomans have died of painkiller overdoses since 2000.
The number of opioid prescriptions from pharmacies was 479 per hour in 2017.https://t.co/IKMGqp9T4p
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— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) August 26, 2019
TWP:
A judge Monday found Johnson & Johnson responsible for fueling Oklahoma’s opioid crisis, ordering the health-care company to pay $572 million to remedy the devastation wrought by the epidemic on the state and its residents.
Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman’s landmark decision is the first to hold a drugmaker culpable for the fallout of years of liberal opioid dispensing that began in the late 1990s, sparking a nationwide epidemic of overdose deaths and addiction. More than 400,000 people have died of overdoses from painkillers, heroin and illegal fentanyl since 1999.
“The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma and must be abated immediately,” Balkman said, reading part of his decision aloud from the bench Monday afternoon.
“As a matter of law, I find that defendants’ actions caused harm, and those harms are the kinds recognized by [state law] because those actions annoyed, injured or endangered the comfort, repose, health or safety of Oklahomans,” he wrote in the decision. More
This seems outrageous to me. How is a drug manufacturer to “blame” if people abuse their product?
What happened to individuals being responsible for their own actions? The governments and the MSM want to blame everybody except for the recreational drug users who lied and pretended to be in pain in order to get high.
I’ve known my entire adult life that pain meds are highly addictive. Thanks to the junkies and irresponsible governments, real chronic pain patients are being denied the only class of pain medication that actually works, and are suffering a very heavy toll for it.
Who’s going to be next? Anheuser Busch? Jack Daniels? Who makes Mountain Dew? Coke or Pepsi?
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